Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The poets and men of letters, who had thriven at the numerous little courts, where the most bloodthirsty despot had always a hearty and appreciative welcome for a man of genius, and would generally cap his verses with impromptu lines, were disgusted with the savage Berbers, who could not understand their refinements, and who, when they sometimes attempted to form themselves upon the model of the cultivated tyrants who had preceded them, made so poor an imitation that it was impossible to help laughing.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole

Again she would have said “my son,” but she could not utter that word.
— from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

I thanked them for their attention towards me; and, though they could not understand, they looked at one another and laughed and chattered till the old man said something or other which I suppose was a joke; for the girl laughed merrily and ran away, leaving her father to take away the dinner things.
— from Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

Unimpassioned as he was, it impressed him painfully, and puzzled him not a little, for he could not understand the age of the elder child being what it was stated to be.
— from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

; and he did plainly tell me that at the Council of War before the fight, it was against his reason to begin the fight then, and the reasons of most sober men there, the wind being such, and we to windward, that they could not use their lower tier of guns, which was a very sad thing for us to have the honour and weal of the nation ventured so foolishly.
— from The Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete by Samuel Pepys

As he was cutting down the first briar with the axe, it broke off short, and so small that the pieces flew all round about, and he could not use the gimlet either.
— from Household Tales by Brothers Grimm by Wilhelm Grimm

‘I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,’ returned Miss Murdstone, ‘if I could not understand the boy, or any boy.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

He could not understand the value or significance of any word or deed taken separately.
— from War and Peace by Tolstoy, Leo, graf

Sister Martha, otherwise Mrs. Cranch, living with some wheeziness in the Chalky Flats, could not undertake the journey; but her son, as being poor Peter's own nephew, could represent her advantageously, and watch lest his uncle Jonah should make an unfair use of the improbable things which seemed likely to happen.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

While he was kicking his heels over the footboard, he asked me what we thought of red hair in America; and I told him that I could not undertake to speak the public voice, but that, for myself, I did not admire it as much as some people did, though, as to his, there was something striking about it, which was strictly true, for it was such an enormous mop that, as his head lay on the pillow, it looked like a bust set in a large red frame.
— from Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 2 (of 2) by John L. Stephens

They were engaged in earnest conversation, but in tones so low that he could not understand them.
— from Little By Little; or, The Cruise of the Flyaway by Oliver Optic

Why, even those for whose relief he aimed were too absorbed in their misery, too used to their lives, to think that change was possible, and when he first came, some of them were amongst his bitterest enemies, for they could not understand that one man, and he a foreigner, could take such interest in a race of natives who were strangers to him.
— from With the Dyaks of Borneo: A Tale of the Head Hunters by F. S. (Frederick Sadleir) Brereton

I could not understand the complete absence of other symptoms.
— from Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 by Various

“I can not use the words heard in castles and courts,” he said; “I have endeavored in translating to give clear, pure German.”
— from The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, January 1884 A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture. Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. by Chautauqua Institution

He had certainly never used the book, and growing restless now in mind, said to himself that some boy having the freedom of the house, had taken it down from its place in the hope of finding pictures.
— from The Stoneground Ghost Tales Compiled from the recollections of the reverend Roland Batchel, the vicar of the parish. by E. G. (Edmund Gill) Swain

We were climbing now, up through the Forest road, the shell, very close, making a terrific noise, and in between the scream of the shell the birds singing like anything!
— from The Dark Forest by Hugh Walpole

They could not understand these eccentric wishes on the part of the strange gentleman, and made no effort to do so.
— from Bayou Folk by Kate Chopin

He reported that the batteries he had reserved for the charge with the infantry had been spirited away by General Lee’s chief of artillery; that the ammunition of the batteries of position was so reduced that he could not use them in proper support of the infantry.
— from From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America by James Longstreet

Thou subtle Circe , Cast not upon the maiden light eclipses: Curse not the day.
— from Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - the Humourous Lieutenant by John Fletcher